Derek Lowe's commentary on drug discovery and the pharma industry. An editorially independent blog from the publishers of Science Translational Medicine. All content is Derek’s own, and he does not in any way speak for his employer.

Posts tagged with "Life in the Drug Labs"

Life in the Drug Labs

Like a lot of other scientists in the Northeast today, I’m getting things in the lab ready for me not being there tomorrow. (I just ran into a colleague who didn’t know that we’re set to get two to three feet of snow, distributed by 50 mile-per-hour winds, over the next 36 hours, and he… Read More

Chemical News

If you do early-stage medicinal chemistry, you’ll probably be interested in this overview of spirocyclic scaffolds. It has examples from the recent literature, and an update on synthetic methods to get into this chemical space. I’ve made several compounds like this over the years, without much success in the assays so far. But as the… Read More

Life in the Drug Labs

Unworkable compounds are one thing. Unworkable processes and reactions are just as big a problem, though. You don’t see as many paper proposing those as you do the ones advancing squirrely chemical matter, but they’re out there. Here’s an example from Quintus, who takes a look at this paper‘s route to some prostaglandin inte… Read More

Life in the Drug Labs

I’ve conveyed my dislike of wide-open office plans several times, and my suspicions of the motives of those who promote them. Here’s an article at the Washington Post that confirms my own biases (and is therefore stunningly accurate): As the new space intended, I’ve formed interesting, unexpected bonds with my cohorts. But my personal… Read More

Business and Markets

I was reading this interesting commentary on the bizarre meltdown of The New Republic, when something struck me. Megan McArdle is talking here about how hard it can be to manage journalists: Both journalists and non-journalists usually fail to understand just how weirdly different media companies are from other sorts of firms, which means they… Read More

Life in the Drug Labs

Well, I’ve been busy sciencing away all morning, and we’re having the kind of weather outside that makes a person want to stay indoors and do chemistry: rainy, chilly, and windy. You wonder why more big chemical discoveries don’t come out of the places that have these sorts of conditions all the time! Air handling… Read More

Life in the Drug Labs

I’d seen various solventless reactions between solid-phase components over the years, but never tried one until now. And I have to say, I’m surprised and impressed. I can’t quite say which literature reference I’m following, unfortunately, because it might conceivably give someone a lead on what I’m making at the momen… Read More

Life in the Drug Labs

I spent the morning in the lab pretty much destroying whatever I touched: wrong solvents for chromatography, dropping things in the sink, bumping solutions all over the inside of my rota-vap. This is, though, a Monday, so at least I have that to blame. But if everyone started out the week the way I did… Read More

Life in the Drug Labs

When you ask a bunch of medicinal chemists to look over a list of structures – screening hits, potential additions to the compound collection, that sort of thing – you’ll find that everyone will cross some of them off. But the agreement between the chemists on which ones need to go, that’s the tough part. Read More

Drug Development

Here’s an article from David Shayvitz at Forbes whose title says it all: “Should a Drug Discovery Team Ever Throw in the Towel?” The easy answer to that is “Sure”. The hard part, naturally, is figuring out when. You don’t have to be an expensive management consultant to realize that it would be helpful for… Read More